Telephone service subscribers have, in the last five to ten years, been offered a plethora of new communication services which have in theory been provided to facilitate the subscriber's use of the telephone network. Some of these new services may be subscribed from a telephone service provider on a monthly or on a per-call basis, depending on the type of service.
Although most of these will be known to persons skilled in the art of telephony, these new services are briefly reviewed for convenience and to illustrate to some extent what some people call telephone service overload.
These include:
i) Calling Number/Name Identification which lets the subscriber see using an appropriate display, the name and/or the number of the caller before the call is answered;
ii) Call Answer Service which automatically answers the subscriber's calls if the subscriber is unavailable or on the phone. This service provides callers with a personal greeting recorded by the subscriber and enables incoming callers to leave a message;
iii) Extension Call Answer Service which provides personal answering for up to four people. Callers are given a personal greeting and offered a selection of the person they want to leave a message for;
iv) Residential Voice Mail service is a service which gives the subscriber ability to send messages to other Call Answer subscribers without ringing their telephone set or talking to them directly.
v) Call Waiting Service which lets the subscriber know if another call from a third party is waiting while the subscriber is on line with another party.
vi) Spontaneous Caller Identification with Call Waiting is an enhancement to call waiting service which enables subscribers with a special display telephone to see the calling number/name identification of an incoming third party call while being on line.
vii) Distinctive Ringing provides the subscriber with a number of distinguishing rings to allow the subscriber to identify the number being called.
viii) Basic Call Screening is a service offered to telephone subscribers wherein up to twelve numbers of the subscriber's choice are directed to a recording that tells the caller that the subscriber is not available. With this service, the telephone will not ring if any one of those twelve callers dials the subscriber's telephone number. The subscriber can add or delete numbers at any time.
ix) Three-Way Calling Service enables the subscriber to talk with two other people at different locations at the same time.
x) Call Return Service provides the subscriber with the telephone number of the last person who called whether the call was answered or not.
xi) Call Again or Busy Call Return is a derivation of Call Return wherein the service monitors a busy line for a predetermined amount of time without the subscriber having to redial the number continuously until the connection is made.
xii) Call Forwarding Service enables the subscriber to transfer calls from one telephone to another.
xiii) Speed Calling Service enables subscribers to make use of abbreviated dialing for a certain number of telephone numbers.
As can be seen from the above, telephone service subscribers can be offered several different telephone features; in fact, several more are being developed. Most features require the subscriber to use one or more codes in association with the (*) and/or (#) keys to activate and deactivate the feature.
The problem associated with the offering of these services is that the subscriber is required to remember and make use of predetermined activation codes to operate and access each service. Thus, even though these services are provided to assist the subscriber in controlling incoming and outgoing calls, it has made the use of all of these services that much more difficult to operate by the subscriber.
Obviously, the vast majority of subscribers will not remember which code to use and therefore have to make use of one or more reminder cards showing activation and deactivation codes. If a card is lost, the subscriber has to contact the service provider for advice in using the service or feature.
This is not only annoying and cumbersome to most users, but also can cause the subscriber to cancel the service after just a few months of use.
In addition, because of these shortcomings, the majority of these services are rarely used to their full potential.
Recently, developments have been made to facilitate the use of one or more of these telephone network services. However, these efforts are being directed towards call screening and prioritization of incoming calls as opposed to integrating and assisting the subscriber with the use of all of these telephone services.
For example, PCT Publication No. WO91/07838 published May 30, 1991 describes a method and apparatus for providing call screening and forwarding for calls directed to a subscriber.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,329,578 which issued to Brennan describes a personal communication service with mobility manager which enables a subscriber to tailor the telephone service to provide communication mobility and incoming call management. Calls to a personal number assigned to the subscriber are routed to a PCS service node which will reroute the call according to the subscriber's service profile stored in a database. The service node ensures that attempts to communicate with the subscriber are handled with appropriate consideration for who is calling, when the call is made, and the urgency of the call. The subscriber is given control over how the system will work for them in routing incoming calls.
Although the aforementioned prior art inventions have helped the subscriber in using call screening and prioritization services, they are still quite limited and problematic for the subscriber. For example, one of the problems associated with the PCS system described in each of the aforementioned prior art documents, is that they operate as an adjunct to the subscriber's telephone service. What this means, is that the subscriber is required to dial a pre-determined number to access the subscriber's profile. In addition, any changes to the mobility and incoming call management profile of the subscriber can only be done using lengthy and complicated interactive voice response (IVR) interfaces. Also, since the PCS service requires the use of a unique telephone number in order to make use of the screening and call routing capabilities of the system, the control of incoming calls can only be made if callers dial this unique telephone number. That is, callers having access to the subscriber's home, business, cellular or other telephone number, can still call the subscriber directly, therefore bypassing the PCS service.
In addition, these prior art inventions do not offer any improvement in managing telephone features such as the Voice Messaging System, Call Waiting, Call Display, Call Return, etc.
A need therefore exists for an improved subscriber interface which overcomes the problems associated with the aforementioned prior art systems.